We are actually in the fourth dimension already, we just don’t understand it due to the symmetry breaking that has occurred in our worldview. Existence is four-dimensional. Being imagines that there is a 3s-1t signature to our experience. The answer basically is that we don’t have to move into another dimension because we are already there in four-dimensional space and four-dimensional time. The problem is that our worldview does not allow us to see it that way, in other words we do not see existence because we project the illusion of Being.

What we have to do is realize that we are already there, there is no necessity of “moving into another dimension”. In the fourth dimension things turn inside out, and just as Jesus said in the Gospel of Thomas everything will be revealed, it is the nature of Existence as four-dimensional space and time to reveal everything, this revealing process may be called manifestation.

http://www.quora.com/Is-it-possible-to-move-into-another-dimension

See Plato’s Republic via Sallis Being and Logos: it would be Hell on Earth.

http://www.quora.com/What-would-a-society-run-by-philosophers-look-like

If we discount Analytical Philosophers because they are really anti-philosophical, at least in principle. Then we might say that all actual philosophers since Nietzsche not only respect him, but their work is based on his to some degree or another. Like Kant and Hegel he is indispensable to thought in our age. Which says obliquely that those who are not thinking with, or beyond Nietzsche are not really thinking, because they are not in the Continental tradition as such. And it is because of Nietzsche that we know that Analytical Philosophy is baseless and anti-philosophical as such, because it does not recognize synthesis as primary. Rather it thinks the Analytical  a priori is all there is and the synthetic a priori is considered metaphysical rubbish to get rid of when ever possible. That is why if an Analytical Philosopher considers someone prior to Frege it will be Kant. We will just skip Hegel, Husserl and anyone else who came after them in the Continental tradition, i.e. the French, who by combining Nazism and Communism without totalitarianism created a renaissance in philosophy which Zizek and Badiou are the culmination, i.e. the first real signs of degeneration. Let us just mention the names of those who have respected and based their thought on Nietzsche from the Continental Tradition: Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Deleuze, Lacan, Derrida . . . we could go on listing all the French philosophers of the second half of the twentieth century along with a few spin-offs in the USA mostly outside of academic philosophy as such which is dominated by boring Analytical Philosophy which mostly about pointless reductionist arguments and why metaphysics is mere illusion.

In our time the line from of Kant, Hegel, Husserl, Heidegger, Derrida, Lacan, Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, Bataille, Deleuze, Foucault, Badiou, Zizek has been the most vibrant. And much of that Vibrancy comes from thinking though of Nietzsche’s thought deeply within the context of the Continental (which is just European philosophy carrying on) tradition. Those who are not respecting Nietzsche and the profundity of his unsystematic philosophy are just not thinking. And that is because thought is always contextualized by the tradition in which and in relation to which thought is happening, seeking the cutting edge of that tradition. For now the pivotal thinkers in the Continental tradition are Kant/Hegel; then Nietzsche; and after him Frege/Husserl; then Heidegger, and after him Merelau-Ponty/Sartre; and then Derrida/Lacan; and then Deleuze/Foucault and finally things begin to degenerates into Badiou/Zizek. All others are dwarfed by these figures who each took thought to a new horizon in their own way. Badiou and Zizek only become relevant due to Deleuze. That is why they attack him so vehemently.

Not all philosophy is created equally, and certainly there is no real comparison between Analytical and Continental philosophy. Analytical Philosophy abandons Synthesis as an a priori and merely recognizes Analytical a prioris. What can we say, there is just no depth to its endless quibbling over ever finer reductionist distinctions. Nietzsche would have hated it if he had known that philosophy would have taken such a route. Nietzsche was the last great German philosopher. Germany after that proved itself uncivilized by perpetrating two World Wars on Europe. The barbarity of the Germans that Nietzsche proclaimed was proven in history. After that it was communism and fascism that would lead to the renaissance in philosophy. French Communists taking the Heidegger’s Fascist philosophy seriously. The reaction in England and the US was to stop thinking because thinking meant considering the problem raised by Hegel of synthesis, and Hegel was the foundation of Marxism, and Marxism was the basis for Soviet Communism, and Senator McCarthy just would not stand for that. So English and American philosophy became extremely dumbed down to pass the censors. Mean while back in Europe our Resistance allies in France who were now dominant within French culture despite De Galle’s rule, kept thinking unfettered by Soviet Dogma, basing their thought on the Fascist Heidegger, who in turn based his thought on Husserl, Hegel, and Nietzsche.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Jd9_tjvcL7t_coIVRzoos5iVwiEF7XiM3iXxc8nlI50/edit

http://www.quora.com/Friedrich-Nietzsche-philosopher-and-author/Is-Nietzsche-respected-by-any-recent-philosophers

The premise of Analytical Philosophy is that Philosophy is only arguments. The point made my most Continental Philosophy is that there is more to thought than Arguments, speculation for instance. However, I have recently listened to Bernstein’s Tapes (bernsteintapes.com) where he goes though the arguments in the Critique of Pure Reason, and I learned a lot about Kant from that. So that is an example where focusing on arguments can be a good practice.

http://www.quora.com/Philosophy/Are-there-any-books-or-websites-that-break-down-the-logical-arguments-of-great-philosophers

I have developed something called General Schemas Theory. It is the next emergent level up from Systems Theory. It asks what else is there other than systems, that are different yet belong together with the as being the same type of ontological concept. They only way for the word System to keep its meeting is for it to be distinguished from other ontological concepts of the same sort. It is odd that no one that I have found has delved into this level of abstraction previously. To kick things off I offer the hypothesis S-prime says that there are ten schemas with the rule that there are two schemas per dimension and two dimensions per schema. Schemas stretch from the negative first dimensions through the zeroth dimension up to the ninth dimension. See http://about.me/emergentdesign which is my dissertation on Design that uses the Schemas to explore the nature of design.

The Schemas with their associated dimensions look like this:

?
F2-Theory – 14 — Three orthogonal Timelines
F1-Theory -12 — Two ortogonal Timelines
M-Theory 11
String Theory 10
————————-
Pluriverse 8-9
Kosmos 7-8
World 6-7
Domain 5-6
OpenScape (meta-system) 4-5
System 3-4
Form 2-3
Pattern 1-2
Monad 0-1
Facet -1-0
?

The point of this juxta-position of Schemas theory hierarchy and the development of String Theory is that string theory appears right at the point where string theory starts, and thus it is unschematized, in other words we have no natural way of thinking about strings, branes and the other assorted features that string theory brings to prominence. But more than this we have learned that the five different string theory possibilities in the tenth dimension become symmetries of a higher theory in the eleventh dimension. And one might hope that things would simplify even further in the twelfth dimension. But mathematics throws a wrench in the works in the next higher dimension by introducing two orthogonal time lines which physicists do not know what to do with because it appears that there is only one time dimension from the point of view now within our metaphysical tradition.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_time_dimensions
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-theory
Itzhak Bars: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Itzhak_Bars

Steven Weinstein: http://watarts.uwaterloo.ca/~sw/papers.htmlHowever, this possibility was thought of in the 1920s by Dunne, but quickly swept under the carpet, having effects only on literature, like Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings and other authors in that time period who heard of this extraordinary theory that time might be multi-dimensional like space. Dunne wrote the Serial Universe to reconcile his theory with that of Einstein but this along with his other works were quickly forgotten and relegated to the dustbin of history.

But now we face the limit of F-Theory where two dimensional orthogonal time is brought to our attention again as we search for a higher and higher unification of nature. For a long time philosophers have been looking for the key to the end of the Metaphysical Era, and one thing that would definitely break that spell would be if there was two dimensional orthogonal time, and not only that, but it has always been there and we were merely oblivious to it. I call this new world era the Heterochronic. It shatters the illusion of the metaphysical era in which we have been trapped since Thales just as certainly as the metaphysical era shattered the preceding Mythopoietic Era. We have been nostalgic for that Era ever since we lost it, though the symmetry breaking of time.

The new symmetry breaking would take us into a world with two dimensions of space and two dimensions of time, within the wider multi-dimensional realm in which we live. We see this in the ideas popping up in physics that allude to the possibility that what we think is three dimensional reality is just a projection from a two dimensional surface in higher dimensional spacetime. If we think of our world actually being two dimensional in space and two dimensional in time and that the three dimensions of space and one dimension of time is an illusion, then this would have profound effects on our actual understanding of the world.

We posit that each symmetry breaking of the worldview gives us a new way to understand the matrix of timespace/spacetime. In the metaphysical era the breakdown in -3time+1space and 3space-1time. If this shifts to 2space-2time then the chiasmic difference of spacetime and timespace will be lost.

In effect this says that the projection of three space comes from the rotation in a second timeline of the plane of space. Same thing is true of time, it is composed of a separate rotation in a different space of the plane of time.

We have known since Kant that space and time were a priori synthetic singular projections that we intuit.

Kant separated the projection of space and time (as absolutes) from the categories, and then schematized the categories to bridge between space and time. There are four categories Quality, Quantity, Modality, and Relation with their sub-categories that form a dialectical construct.

We now know that space-time is fused into a single continuum as is energy-matter, and also info-entropy.

It is tantalizing to image that the further symmetry breaking in which we lose the 3-1/1-3 signature takes us into the realm of that projection itself.

We now know that most of what we see as full bodied reality is in fact an illusion produced by our brains. We see very little of the world around us and fill in most of the scene ourselves. The fact that we see a full bodied world that is so rich shows that our brains are working overtime behind the scenes to give us the impression that the world of our experience is rich and comes to us fully in our experience of it.

But there are all kinds of oddities to explain, one of which is how time seems to speed up as we get older and can dilate given various experiences that we are undergoing. In a sense we know that our time is different from objective time. We speak of subjective and objective time. Bernstein criticizes Kant in his lecture course for only giving us Objective time of physics when it is clear that there are various different kinds of time to be accounted for.

If there were two dimensions of time we could more easily explain our experience of different appearances of time in our experience. And also if space is really two dimensional and three dimensions is an illusion to us then that more easily explains the difference between objective space and the projected space we produce a priori.

What we are saying is that in the mythopoietic space was experienced four dimensionally as was time. There were four moments of time and four dimensions of space. When the Metaphysical era occured there was a break in time into the familiar 3s-1t and 1s-3t signatures we all know and love.

But if another symmetry breaking occurs the chiasma between spacetime and time space will vanish and we will be in a very odd world where the signature will be 2t-2s, and spacetime and timespace will collapse together.

But that will surely take us into the heterochronic world era as metaphysical time is always one dimensional either in a straight line or in a circle.

In the mythopoietic era there were four moments of time. The fourth moment was mythic time. We lost that moment and the Gods fled. We keep trying to get it back in various ways. But according to Heidegger the Metaphysical will be over when the last god has fled. Of course the last God is the first God. For instance, though Hurian/Hittite myth we have discovered that there was Alalu prior to Uranus, and so the generations of gods stretch back further than we realized. The deeper we go searching for the first god the closer the last god gets to us.

In the Heterochronic we get the mythic time moment back to balance the present, and we lose the past and future as time because they collapse back into the Preterite, the original time of the Orlog in the Indo-European worldview. Of course, the preterite is preternatural. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preternatural).

A friend reminded me of this diagram:

He says it is from the FQXi: scientific director Max Tegmark http://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/crazy.htmlBut I am not sure which publication it is mentioned in.

2011.12.26 I read this article again and found it very interesting. The whole question was whether these various dimensional combinations were stable enough to give anthropocentric observers. The fact that 4s-4t and 2s-2t are both unstable is actually good for my point because what we are saying is that 4s-4t of the mythopoietic did undergo a symmetry break of the kind described in the Bicameral Mind. So the four dimensions of time and space were unstable. And since it is an image of the meta-system when the symmetry breaking occurs then we get into a stablity which is the meta-physical era. This also fits my view that the Multiverse is Hyperbolic and so that is why we see everything as expanding. And when universes are created in the multiverse then they are elliptical. When the meta-physical breaks into the heterochronic it will again be unstable, because the projection mechanism will be visible to us, which is normally invisible. The four dimensional matrix of spacetime, and the 2s-2t X 2 are both basically the same formation. So fundamentally we went into a stable configuration during the metaphysical era and we are basically returning to an unstable heterochronic era which is more or less like the mythopoietic without gods, i.e. it is a symmetrical configuration and that sets us up for a symmetry breaking into a more stable but higher energy pattern of spacetime configuration on the 3s-1t pattern which has a version for time (i.e. the tachion configuration) and the normal pattern of 3s-1t.

Notice that the 2s-2t universe of the heterochronc that I am flouting speculatively in this answer is hyperbolic and unstable in this diagram as is the 4s-4t of the mythopoietic. The chiasm between the 3s-1t and the 1s-3t has our stable universe in it, but the opposite of that is one with tachions which is extremely interesting.

Now this diagram is talking about physical time, and I am talking about the ontological expression of phenomenological timespace in eras which are the largest emergent periods in our worldview when we talk of the various eras. But the analogies are quite interesting.

For graphics see:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lFoHMLcddn6tMDsZWkNM-At9ibidVbTD-FeSLExHysM/edit

http://www.quora.com/Dimensions/Why-does-string-theory-have-only-one-time-dimension-What-would-it-mean-if-it-had-two-or-more

That we can make our own aliens and we don’t need them.

http://chronicle.augusta.com/latest-news/2011-12-16/strange-nuclear-waste-lint-might-be-biological-nature

And thus we are the truly alien ourselves .

http://www.quora.com/Extraterrestrial-Life/If-we-had-to-show-aliens-the-one-true-marvel-of-the-human-civilization-what-should-we-ideally-show

Few people disagreed with him because almost no one knew he existed during his own time. His impact came later as it became clear that his message was in fact prescient. In fact that became clear when Europe fell into the World Wars and it was clear that Nihilism was the key product of the Western worldview ultimately. Nietzsche following Hegel was an ultra-romantic, i.e. one who saw that rationalism and the enlightenment was ultimately bankrupt because it led to the Terror of the French Revolution, and ultimately to the utter destruction of Europe as a civilization by World Wars and the Cold war aftermath.

The essence of Nietzsche’s thought after Hegel was to incorporate Evolution and to reverse everything possible in prior thinkers. So he reverses Hegel by searching for a way for the Noble to have self-consciousness. He reverses Schopenhauer by attempting to be positive about life and its prospects. He reverses Wagner by rejecting the Christianization of the Pagan mythologies. Of course he then reverses many long held beliefs that were unquestioned within the western worldview such as the necessity to know tow to Christianity as a religious belief system. Or the idea that Germany of his time was represented civilization. Or the idea that colonializaton was the manifest destiny of Europe, and Europe was doing the world a favor by taking control and destroying indigenous worlds and raping and pillaging the entire earth. So basically Nietzsche went after as many Sacred Cows of the European tradition as he could. And of course that did not go over well with those who discovered his work initially. But because his basic position on European Barbarity held true as shown by the fall of Europe into true barbarity of the World Wars people realized that his philosophy was grounded in some reality no matter how unpalatable his attacks were on Sacred Cows, like Christianity. And of course that led to others doing similar questioning of those same Sacred Cows and thus we get 20th century philosophy. Almost every philosopher in the 20th century was profoundly influenced by Nietzsche. This is because Nietzsche saw the rot in the European worldview prior to it falling apart by the mutual self destruction of the European powers. The reason for World War One was that expansion in Europe was based on the colonializaton of the world by the European powers, and when they ran out of territory to suck in to their empires overseas then they fell into Warfare amongst themselves in Europe itself, because the only way to grow was to take over each others territory. But they did not realize that the War in Europe would be so devastating. It was so devastating that it called everything into question, and Nietzsche has already questioned everything prior to the internecine warfare within Europe as the empires collapsed on themselves.

Nietzsche’s own philosophy is a bit incoherent because it is based on the idea of reversing everything that prior philosophers of the generation just prior to him believed. So for instance he attacks Socrates and Plato and adopts the stance that the Pre-socratics were better. Philosophically this is the equivalent of rejecting Christianity as a religion. But Nietzsche struggled to make all these reversals make sense together and developed the idea of the Free Spirit as one who was unfettered in his thinking and could think completely outside the box that had restricted thought up to his time. He wanted to get the coherence he sought in spite of his strategy of rejecting everything, i.e. being an “Academic” from the point of view of Skepticism, i.e. saying No to everything previously thought, yet saying Yes to life, where as previous thought said No to life (so even this is a reversal). He found that possibility of coherence when he discovered the question concerning the Value of Values. He said this was his greatest discovery, because it gave coherence to his strategy of reversal. In effect his reversal of everything thought before was a value in the field of possible values, and we could look at every value in that field and ask what the value of that value was. Nietzsche claimed that reversal of all other values was more valuable than any other value in the field. And that was because it gave freedom from the negative consequences of the other values that were anti-life. Because he came after Darwin Nietzsche could take life and evolution as the basis of all positive values. So that mean that anything that destroyed life, or rendered it non-viable was a poor value. And his position was that all prior values within the tradition were anti-life. This proved itself to be true shortly after the turn of the century when the entire set of European empires fell into destroying each other through mechanized and trench warfare.

So the question after Nietzsche was to what extent a given philosophy affirmed life rather than death.

http://www.quora.com/Friedrich-Nietzsche-philosopher-and-author/What-are-the-biggest-criticisms-against-Nietzsche

Quran sorts some of this out at least for Muslims.

Quran identifies three intelligent creatures: Men, Angels, and Jinn.

Jinn and Men are duals of each other but have freewill, Angels do not have freewill.

The reason that Angels do not have free will is that if they did then the revelation could be corrupted.

Jinn are invisible made of Fire and Air and Men are visible made of Earth and Water.

But there is this very interesting story that two angels came to the people in Mesopotamia and taught them magic but at the same time warned them about how dangerous it was. So this is the one example of a negative revelation via angels from God which to my mind is a very interesting idea.

Aliens on the other hand, are in fact projections of us. Sometimes they are made to look like we expect Jinn to look like. A lot of time what we are talking about when we talk about Aliens are Jinn. Jinn are in fact the Greek gods, they are Fairies. They are ubiquitous in anthropological records of different cultures. They are our duals and because of that they are not truly other.

Aliens are truly other and so that strangeness and opacity can  only come from out of ourselves.

If actual aliens showed up, we would not comprehend them be cause they would not relate to any of our projections of the Other either.

There is a great book that captures the shock on the faces of tribes peoples when they first saw White men who were explorers called FIrst Contact. That shock was profound. The were looking at other human beings but they saw them as their dead ancestors coming back from the grave. They saw them as their dead sons, or dead husbands, or dead uncles raised from the dead. Seeing the white invaders as  walking death (considering what they had done to other invaded cultures) might not have been too far from the truth. But be that as it may, the point is that what is most shocking is ourselves.

http://www.quora.com/Are-angels-and-aliens-the-same-thing

Because we do not understand ourselves very well.

If we do not understand ourselves how can we understand God.

http://www.quora.com/God/Why-cant-we-understand-God

Winchester House — http://www.winchestermysteryhouse.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winchester_Mystery_House

Is Winchester house a symbolic embodiment of the Western worldview?

Given that this one of the most surreal places one might actually visit which is in Silicon Valley CA, then perhaps this shows that one of the strangest places we can occupy is our own Worldview.

Is it this strangness that is the difference between occupying our worldview verses dwelling in our own worldview.

What can Winchester house tell us about the strangeness and surrealness of ourselves?

Example: Stairway to Nowhere

In the Western worldview there is also a stairway to nowhere too called the Meta-levels of Being.

http://www.quora.com/Travel/What-are-the-most-surreal-places-one-can-ever-visit